Origins
Although the historical record itself is very limited, there is a consensus of cultural, linguistic, and genetic evidence that the Ashkenazi Jewish population originated in the Middle East[citation needed]. Jews have lived in Germany, or "Ashkenaz", at least since the early 4th century[citation needed]. When they arrived in northern France and the Rhineland, the Ashkenazi Jews brought with them both Rabbinic Judaism Rabbinic Judaism or Rabbinism has been the mainstream form of Judaism since the codification of the Talmud in the centuries following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE by the Roman Empire. Rabbinic Judaism gained predominance within the Jewish diaspora between the second to sixth centuries CE, with the development of the oral law and and the Babylonian Talmudic culture that underlies it[citation needed]. Yiddish Yiddish is a non-territorial High German language of Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. Unlike other Germanic languages, Yiddish is written with the Hebrew alphabet as opposed to a Latin alphabet, once spoken by the vast majority of Ashkenazi Jewry, is a Jewish language The Jewish languages are a set of languages and dialects that developed in various Jewish communities around the world, more notably in Europe, West Asia, and North Africa. The usual course of development for these languages was through the addition of Hebrew words and phrases, used to express uniquely Jewish concepts and concerns, to the local which developed from the Middle High German Middle High German , abbreviated MHG (Mhd.), is the term used for the period in the history of the German language between 1050 and 1350. It is preceded by Old High German and followed by Early New High German. In some uses, the term covers a longer period, going up to 1500 vernacular, heavily influenced by Hebrew 1United States Census 2000 PHC-T-37. Ability to Speak English by Language Spoken at Home: 2000. Table 1a.PDF and Aramaic Aramaic is a Semitic language with a 3,000-year history. It has been the language of administration of empires and the language of divine worship. It was the day-to-day language of Israel in the Second Temple period , the original language of large sections of the biblical books of Daniel and Ezra, likely to have been the mother tongue of Jesus of. (By comparison, the Greek Greek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical ancient Greek literature and the New Testament of or Latin Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe. Romance languages such as Italian, French, Catalan, Romanian, Spanish, and Portuguese are descended from Latin, while many others, especially European languages, have inherited influence on Yiddish was much less significant).
European Jews came to be called "Ashkenaz" because the main centers of Jewish learning were located in Germany Germany (pronounced /ˈdʒɜrməni/ ), officially the Federal Republic of Germany (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland, pronounced [ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant] ( listen)), is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south. Ashkenaz is a Medieval Hebrew name for Germany. (See Usage of the name Sephardi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, and other Jewish ethnic divisions for the term's etymology.)
<<Table of Contents Sephardi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, and other Jewish ethnic divisions | Next>> | Show All>>
